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I touched upon the issue of ‘traffic greed’ in an earlier post and thought I would elaborate a little further on this term today.

What is traffic greed?

Traffic greed occurs when you are eager to attract traffic to your website at any cost. You want visitors and you want them now. You want people on your website, and you don’t care who these people are or what their interests are. You are willing to get these people onto your website whatever the cost.

Why is traffic greed bad?

The concept of ‘traffic at any cost’ going to drain your advertising budget faster than you can shout, ‘come to my site’. It is far too easy to attract expensive visitors who have no interest in your website. Sure, your web statistics may show some impressive visitor numbers (whilst your money lasts) but that is about the only real benefit you will see.

The key to good traffic

Only pay for targetted traffic. If your website is about camels, target only the camel loving web users. If you are attracting visitors to your website who have an interest in your subject matter, they will stay a while and take the time to really explore your site. Hopefully they will become a member of your community, get involved and become long term members. When this happens, your advertising spend is worthwhile and effective.

If visitors click on a link to a site only for it to be of no interest to them, they will more than likely leave within the first few seconds and never return. This is a waste of your money and a waste of that visitor’s time.

I cannot emphasise this strongly enough: target your traffic. Pay only for people that are interested in the subject matter of your website. Are you able to justify every penny of your advertising spend? If not, you may be suffering from traffic greed.